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When visiting Copenhagen I was expecting a city similar to Helsinki or even Stockholm, and in some ways it was, but one thing I wasn’t expecting was to find these splashes of colour on almost every street corner. Even on a gloomy winter’s day I was surprised how colourful Copenhagen was.

These weren’t the only urban bird houses I saw, there were rows of them doted around the city. I am not sure if they are purely for decoration or home to some nesting birds, either way they should be encouraged.

I stumbled across a few great pieces of street art, especially around Christiania. There were areas of Copenhagen where the line between art and graffiti had been crossed but in most cases it gave the city personality.

Do you see it as art or as graffiti?

Christiania was a pretty colourful neighborhood even during the winter. Most visitors snap a photo of the entrance before putting their camera away for the rest of their visit. I covered Christiania in more detail in another post and you can read that HERE.

One of the most colourful and most famous rows of houses in Copenhagen has to be those in Nyhavn, a popular spot for tourists and a few love locks.

Each Neighborhood had its own design, some with rows and rows of identical houses. The houses around Grundtvig’s Church is another example, you can see my photographs from the church and its surroundings HERE.

There was plenty of construction taking place in the city but your attention isn’t always focused on that, as the fences were often painted in lines of colour or surrounded by an obscure piece of colourful art.

The area around Superkilen was very unique in many ways, there were plenty of photo opportunities including this rainbow coloured bike rack.

Even at night there were colourful spots to be found. See another view of the National Opera House HERE.

What did you think? If you have colourful shots from Copenhagen I would like to see them, share your links in the comments below. I am also on Instagram and would like to see any photos there that you love.

When heading to Copenhagen I had little interest in visiting Christiania but I had heard from friends that it would be worth it, after all it is Copenhagen’s second most visited place in the city.

Christiania began Forty-five years ago when the military moved out of what had been a long standing military base and squatters moved in. The community grew and grew with the government finally legalising the squat in 1983. In 2011 Christiania’s future was threaten so the residents set up a foundation to buy the land from the government, many people were happy to donate and 12.5 million kroner was raised.

Photos are prohibited within Chritstiania and I was happy to follow the request. After a few snaps at the entrance my camera went into my bag and in we went.

Because of the drug trade the area had lost some of its charm in my opinion, it could have also been the time of year. Visiting in the summer I am sure the atmosphere would be different, there were plenty of areas for people to gather in the sun and the natural surroundings would be picturesque. But on this gloomy winter’s day it wasn’t the most welcoming, especially when we stumbled across the ominously named ‘Pusher Street’.

I hadn’t read much about the area before my arrival and I had no idea about the change that Pusher Street had recently gone through. Huts that had once lined the roads had recently been torn down in an effort to reduce the drug trade that had been dominating Christiania. It is estimated that 1 billion kroner changes hands on Pusher Street with many people looking to grab a piece, leading to other problems. The most recent being a shooting in August 2016 where a policeman was shot and two others injured.

Flag of Christiania

Now, the huts had been replaced with groups of guys standing around, some huddled around burning trash cans. I never felt unsafe or threaten as I walked through but it was far from a comfortable situation. The residents have never wanted Christiania to be only about the use of cannabis and since these incidences they have decided to move away from it, encouraging people to buy elsewhere.

Once through the group of buildings we walked along the embankments that ran next to the water. Christiania was at one time an operational military base for hundreds of years and has a number of sites under national heritage protection.

Christiania within the city of Copenhagen

Houses continued all the way back to the waterside, some were old buildings that had been re-purposed, others were more make-shift, made from recycled materials crudely knocked together. It would have been nice to walk along the water, and even to the other side, but my trip was restricted by time, so we walked back to the road in search of Danish pastries.

Even now I still don’t know exactly why the people of Christiania are allowed to in habit such a large area of Copenhagen, and with the growing need for development how much longer it will exist, but I think it is great in this modern world that there is a place where people can build their own society and community with values of their own. And that is something to see and experience.

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Last weekend I visited Copenhagen for the first time and one of the highlights was my visit to Grundtvig’s Church in the Bispebjerg district.

Only 15 minutes bus ride from Copenhagen central station, the church is a rare example of expressionist church architecture. The construction of a church, in the name of hymn writer N.F.S Grundtvig, was decided in 1913 after a competition won by Peder Vihelm Jensen-Klint.

After the death of Klint in 1930 his son Kaare Klint took over construction and the church was finished in 1940, nineteen years after the foundations were laid.

Once the construction of the church was agreed it was to be the center of a new neighborhood and the surrounding houses were built around it in the same yellow brick.

My trip to the church was remarkable. Only a short distance from town the church seem to be far enough away that it saw little visitors, or at least during my visit, there was only a handful of people during the time I was there. The emptiness of the church only added value to the experience and allowed plenty of uninterrupted time for photographs.